Managing Tableau Online Licenses with New License Information and Reclamation API Endpoints

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Flexera’s SaaS Management has enhanced its Tableau Online integration to optimize license spend and license usage. You can now view the total number of allowed Tableau licenses by license type and identify which Tableau licenses have been assigned to your organization’s users. You can also now reclaim underutilized Tableau licenses to optimize license usage.

Tableau Online License Types and License Differentiation

SaaS Management’s new Application Roster and Application Access API endpoint identifies each Tableau user’s assigned licenses. The new License Information API endpoint can identify the following Tableau Online license types described in the table below.

Table -1 • Tableau Online License Type Descriptions

License Type	Description
Creator	This license type’s user permissions include: Server administration Advanced server deployment monitoring Programmatic content migration Adding data sources to create new dashboards and visualizations.
Explorer	This license type’s user permissions include: Site role management, content ownership, settings, and permission settings Visualizing existing data and exploring existing data sources, but not allowing the ability to add any new data or data sources Creating alerts and sending emails when the stated conditions are met Scheduling data flow Creating and sharing custom views.
Viewer	This license type’s user permissions include: Viewing and interacting with the published dashboards Receiving data-driven alerts and creating personal alerts.

Auto-Populated Tableau License Information

The SaaS Management integration with Tableau offers a License Information integration task that automatically retrieves every 24 hours the name of the Tableau subscription, license type, and total allowed number of licenses. This auto- populated Tableau license information provides a more complete view of your Tableau SaaS entitlements and component usage by displaying:

• Assigned entitlements
• User’s license activity (based on the user’s last login).

Important • If you enable the License Information integration task, note the following:

• If you have manually managed Tableau application licenses data in SaaS Management prior to enabling the License Information Integration task, then the managed application's license information you previously entered in the Licenses Tab will be overwritten with the data ingested from Tableau.
• You need to enter and keep up to date the following Licenses Tab information. The License Information integration task does not pull in this information. The SaaS application’s annual spend calculation relies on entered and accurate license effective and ending dates.
  • Amount
  • Currency
  • Payment Frequency
  • Effective Date
  • Ending Date

• When the License Information integration task first discovers an active subscription, it defaults the effective date to its discovery date and displays an empty end date. As a result, the license term is effective and will not expire.
• When the License Information integration task is disabled, the managed application's license information reverts to what it was prior to the License Information integration task being enabled. As a result, your previously manually entered license information appears in the Licenses Tab.
• When the License Information integration task is re-enabled, the last automatic-captured license data that was available before disabling the License Information integration task appears in the Licenses Tab.

To auto-populate Tableau license information using the SaaS Management user interface, refer to the Tableau Online integration instructions.

Managing Available Tableau Online Licenses

Once the License Information integration task for Auto-Populated Tableau License Information is enabled, you can add or remove the Tableau product licenses you wish to manage within SaaS Management. For details, refer to the Tableau Online integration instructions.

What happens when a Tableau license is filtered out?

• No license entry appears on the Tableau Licenses tab, even when the Show Inactive switch is disabled.
• Filtered out licenses are not included in annual spend calculations.
• Filtered out licenses do not appear on the All SaaS Licenses page.
• Filtered out licenses do not appear on the SaaS License Usage page when the Show License Details switch is enabled.
• Users who are only entitled to licenses that have been filtered out do not appear in the Tableau Users tab.
• Activity from users who are only entitled to licenses that have been filtered out does not appear in the Tableau Activity tab.
• Since users in this filtered state are not listed in the Tableau Users tab, they also would not be flagged as reclamation opportunities.
• Users in the filtered state would not count toward active/inactive/never/total usage counts from SaaS metrics.
• The HR roster user entry would not show the user listed in the applications list if they have been filtered out.
• A user in the filtered state would not be marked as suspicious, even if their HR roster entry were deactivated and they were still generating Tableau usage. The user in the filtered state has been effectively removed from the Application Roster and the Tableau Activity tab. Therefore, the user does not appear on the Suspicious SaaS Activities page.
• If a user is not assigned any licenses, the user is filtered out of the Tableau Users tab.

Reclaiming Tableau Online Licenses

The new Reclamation API endpoint allows Software Asset Managers to reclaim underutilized Tableau licenses to optimize license usage. To reclaim Tableau licenses using the SaaS Management user interface, refer to the Tableau Online integration instructions.

SaaS Management’s new Application Roster and Application Access API endpoint identifies each Tableau user’s assigned licenses. The new Reclamation API endpoint allows Software Asset Managers to reclaim underutilized Tableau licenses to optimize license usage. For further details, refer to the following API Endpoints and the Tableau Online integration instructions.

API Endpoints

Application Roster and Application Access

https://<base_url>/api/3.14/sites/<siteId>/users

License Information

https://<base_url>/api/3.14/sites/<siteId>

Reclamation

https://<base_url>/api/3.14/sites/<siteId>/users/userId

Application Task Tracking

The following columns in the Application Task Tracking chart were updated to include Tableau:

• License Differentiation
• License Information
• Reclamation

Additional Resources

More information on new features and enhancements can be found in What's New in Flexera One.